


I'm broken but I'll try (to fix you along with me tonight)

by Buttercup_ghost



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Autistic Character, Bullying, Childhood Sexual Abuse, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Fluffy Ending, G...gay, Hurt/Comfort, I love mikan so much and I think that shows through in my writing, Kisses, Mental Health Issues, No Proof Reading we die like Men, happy v day I love you both so much, mikan and chiaki are both autistic lesbians and I love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-05 12:31:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13387842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buttercup_ghost/pseuds/Buttercup_ghost
Summary: her touch was soft.





	I'm broken but I'll try (to fix you along with me tonight)

Her mom doesn't touch her. She realizes this isn't normal when she is four, seeing other kids clutching onto their mothers hands like a lifeline. 

Her moms hand is right there, dangling low enough for her to grasp. She hesitates, looking at the other kids on last time, before reaching out for the very first time.

Her mothers hand is warm, and soft. Warn down from years of weariness, a life time of stress taking away its harsh edges.

Suddenly, she feels a sting on her hand, the grip broken. Her moms disgusted face is above her.

She slapped her hand away.

(mikan never tries to grab her hand again.)

 

 

Her first kiss is with a stumbling man with liquor on his breath. 

Her mom is smoking, a cigarette in her hand as she looks on calmly, disinterested. 

She doesn't know what's happening. She doesn't like it, thrashes and kicks and screams at him to stop. He does, a scowl on his face as he spit in her face. 

Her mother turns away, bored, flicking her cigarette ashes onto her.

The only touch she feels for the rest of the year is burning buds and her own clumsy hands, putting bandaids on the burns on her shoulder blades, tears falling down in clumps.

(the next time she is grabbed by the arm and forced up by a man who's ten times older than her, she lets it happen)

 

 

When she is five she goes to school for the first time. 

The kids smile at her, like she's one of their own, and she smiles back. The teacher is a old lady with soft features and a warm smile. She feels happy, even if her home is filled with ash whenever she went back.

(it doesn't last.)

 

 

She's playing dolls, in the classroom, with some of the other girls—friends?—in her class, giggling. The teacher is looking upon fondly. Her dolls are a bit warn, only two of them. She bought them herself, for this very occasion, a thrift store down the street exchanging the quarters she found on the ground for her most treasured possessions.

Theyre the opposite of each other, in some ways, long purple hair on one, short pink hair on the others. She almost got a different doll than the pink one, blonde hair pulled into pigtails and red lips pulled into a smile, but decided that pink went with purple more.

She smiles, before tilting the two dolls together, their fake pink lips mashing together. 

And the classroom goes silent, the kids looking at her like she grew another head, the teacher's old features curling into disgust.

Everyone avoids her the rest of the year.

(she takes her moms left over  cigarettes and presses them into the purple dolls back, tears rolling down her face as she took out her anger and frustrations onto the poor doll. the pink one is left untouched.)

 

 

When she is six, sitting in her room alone, only the two doll that ruined everything for company, her mom rushes in, and grabs her by the hand. It's all she ever wanted, but the pull is harsh.

She drops one of her dolls on the ground, and is pulled along before she can grab it.

(the next person who moves in finds it, a little girl with pink hair who thinks the abused doll is beautiful, despite the burns on its skin.) 

 

She learns how to tend to wounds, through the years, learns how to treat things, eventually becoming enamored with it. The idea of someone under her care, her control—she studies, ignoring how the other kids go and play, avoiding her like the plague. She studies, giggling as she reads text books on bodies and blood. But, she is still lonely, the new kid, quickly turning into the weird kid, who looks at diagrams of bodies and smiles at the carnage. Soon, she's memorized all the books she could find around her house, the loneliness she tried to keep out creeping in. Three months in, there are flowers on her desk, a mourning that leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

She tries to talk to her classmates, but they don't respond, treating like she's a ghost once again. 

When she is paired up with a boy, his sneer towards her, she feels happy, almost. Because he talks to her, even if it's just to demand she does all the work. To not look so disgusting. To not try and talk to him.

She continues talking to him.

He lashes out, pulls her hair, puts gum in it, even cutting it with scissors when the teacher wasn't looking. He says she's pathetic. 

She hates it, but oh, oh. 

Finally.

Its better than being a ghost.

(he and his friends gang up on her, tearing pages from her medical text books, in the back of a ally. they punch her, and it's the first touch she's felt in months.)

 

Eventually, she's a punching back of sorts, once kids realize that she wouldn't fight back. Sometimes, even the teacher mocks her, a laughing stalk, calls on her after she's been absent, knowing that she wouldn't know the answers. Before, she was never called on.

(the PE teacher pulls her into the storage room, in between classes, hands roaming where they shouldn't go. and she feels just as dirty as she did before, tears shinning– but it's the only time she is held. he sneers that this is the only thing she'll ever be good at, just a doll to please others. she believes him.)

She tales tests, once people realize her talent, with much reluctance from her teachers, that always tried to hold her back. She's moved to the advance classes, because of her medical knowledge, despite her lack of know how in anything else. She bites her nails in fret, slow on the uptake. "You could do so much more, if you just _tried_." the new teachers say, expecting way more from her than anyone ever had.

(she's always only been fixated on medical stuff, though. there's an anxious trembling in her chest, like it's gonna explode, and she's far to overwhelmed.)

(she's diagnosed with autism at age twelve. the kids ask how someone so stupid, so broken, someone with that kind of _disease_ , got into the advance class. a part of her aches with righteous fury, at their distinct lack of knowledge on the subject, her insticts as a nurse screaming at her, but the rest of her can't help but think they're right.)

 

 

In her last year of middle school she's highered as a local nurse, her test scores on her medical exams the highest in the nation. Soon, she is in high demand. A natural, they say.

Mikan talks to her patients, sometimes, and they do not shy away. She likes it—likes that they do everything she says, typically without question. She even grows close, with some, them talking about their hobbies and life's, what they will do after getting out of the hospital. She nods along, content to listen to their fantasies, staying as long as she could, taking as many shifts she could, for this social interaction. She before talked about herself, much,  but just hearing someone's voice, just hearing _anyone's_ voice, without yelling or screaming or _hate_ , was enough for her. 

(one day, she'll be chatting with them like usual, smiling, and then the next day, when she went to work, they'd be gone.)

(only some of them were discharged.)

 

The future didn't so much as land in her lap, as smack her in the face. Her mother, who, since working at the hospital, she'd been seeing less and less, sneered at her, hissing that she forgot to grab the mail, before roughly throwing it in her face. She didn't even spare her a glance, as she walked up the stairs, the same disgusted look on her face.

Mikan smiled. It was the first time she talked to her in a week.

(and then mikan sorts through the mail, a strangled shriek as she  saw the hope peaks crest on a plain white envelope.) 

 

 

(when she's packing, a few months later, she hesitates, before slipping a pink haired doll in her duffle bag.)

 

 

"A-are you sure you're gonna be ok, without me?" Mikan fretted worriedly, briefly glancing at the cigarette in her mothers hands, disapprovingly. Her mother scoffed, "I'll be better, without you here, you nuisance. I'd be _even better_ if you were never born."

Mikan shifted, hands fretting together, briefly tugging at her hair before her mom snapped at her to stop that. "I-I'll work really hard," she started, trying to offer some reassurance, "I-if you graduate hopes peak, y-you're set for life. I-I'll make you a lot of money." 

Her mom glanced down at her, disinterestly searching her gaze. 

"You better buy me more cigarettes, then."

Mikan grimaced, trying to ignore the urge to explain how harmful smoke was to the lungs, remembering how her mother reacted last time. She was trying to make her mother happy, after all.

(a bitter snarl, "good. I'd rather die than have to put up with you, and you're ugly face. the faster I leave you, the better—just looking at how pathetic you are makes me want to die.") 

(mikan never wanted to hear her talk like that again.)

"I-I'll buy you more c-cigarettes," she said, resigned.

 

 

 The first person who greets her is a girl with pink hair, barely looking up from her video game, offering a quick wave. It was more than she got from most people, and she stammered, greeting the girl back. She felt like she glowed, for the rest of the class. She almost looked forward to tomorrow morning, wondering if the girl would greet her again.

(but the next day, the girl wasn't there. she should have known—classes were soptipnal here, after all, and it wasn't like she'd go to class if given the choice, just to greet some silly girl like her. shes not there the next day, or the next, or the next. she doesn't come back until the new, strong willed teacher, orange hair pulled up into a pig tails, goes in search for her. she learns that her name is _chiaki_. it's beautiful.)

 

Chaiki sits next to her, smiling softly, as she pressed buttons like a expert. Probably because she _is_ a expert. Mikan, on the other hand, had never had time for games, and her mother would never let her buy any. Most of the time, actually, she took the money mikan earned for herself. So it wasn't a surprised that she beat mikan easily.

The Adreniline in her veins starts to fade, the smile she wore when she was desperately mashing buttons, in an attempt to catch up, despite logically knowing she wouldn't win, starting to fade. She glanced over to the girl, who was humming, almost contently, despite her silence. Mikan bit her lip, worrying that she had been a bad competitor. Maybe she'd never want to talk to her again. When the girl opened her mouth, she braced herself for the inevitable insults.

"..that was a good game." Chiaki said, instead, ignoring hiyokos comment about how mikans abilities sucked, in favor of looking at the girl from the corner of her eyes.

Mikan almost felt paralyzed under her gaze.

"We should play again sometime," chiaki blinked, slowly stating with a yawn.

(the next time turned into another, and another, and another. mikan wondered if this is what it's like to have a friend.)

 

 

One day, as they sit on a bench, mikan looking upon the birds gathering at her feet, throwing out bird feed here and there, chiaki looks up from her game, trying hard to look her deep into her eyes, before looking away. Even with mikan, it was a bit hard to maintain eye contact. She decided that she'd have to say it, softly murmering, "thank you."

Mikans confused, but knows that chiaki will talk more, if given a moment to think, "you never rush me. you let me take my time, and gather my thoughts.." she trailed off, a smile pressing itself upon her lips, "and, you don't get mad when I play my games, while talking... most people don't do that for me." She looks so genuinely soft, in that moment, and mikan finds herself blushing.

"I-it's fine... I-I'm sort of the same way, sometimes. I-it's a bit different, but.. s-sometimes I g-get so focused on my w-work, I forget the world around me."

Chiaki hums in understanding, glancing back to her game. Her eyes are a bit sad, "Do people make fun of you for it, too?"

She paused, wondering how she should answer that. She settled for the blunt truth, "t-they did."

Annoyance flashed upon her face, her eye brows furrowing. But before mikan could start to panic, she spoke, "They shouldn't have done that to you."

Mikan is silent for a long time after, before quietly replying, "y-yeah. Maybe."

(chiaki makes her realize how harsh and jaded her world has been, her endless kindness shocking her no matter how much time past. silently, she thinks, that people were wrong to do that to chiaki, too. silently, she thinks, that she only deserves good things.)

(and sometimes, sometimes, she thinks- _we could be good together.)_

 

 

Chiaki is laying upside down on her bed, lazily holding her Gameboy in lull. Her fingers press the buttons without even trying, eyes flickering away to look around mikans room, all while never breaking her combo. She pauses, when something catches her eye, sitting up, folding her legs under herself, her game forgotten. 

"Hey... what's that..?" She drawls, pointing to the doll hanging out of mikans drawers. Mikan looks up, pausing her reading of medical text books—she's read this one before, but she still finds it enjoyable, always happy to brush up on stuff. "This doll..." chiaki said, standing up, to delicately pick it up, "it almost looks like me."

Mikan startled, glancing at it, "Y-you're right." 

"Hm.." chiaki hummed, a finger tapping the side of her chin, gathering her thoughts, "I think.. I have a similar one."

She slung her bag off of her shoulders, rummaging through it, before pulling out a purple haired doll. "Oh... it looks like you."

"T-that's..!" Mikan gasped, in shock, "t-that's a doll from my childhood!"

"hm...?" Chiaki glanced at her, tilting her head, as mikan tried to regain composure. 

"W-when I was y-younger, I used to live in a house with my m-mom. W-we had to move out, and I forgot it."

Chiaki eyes widened, before a soft smile curled on her face, "I found this doll in a house I moved into... I wonder if it's the same.."

Mikan took a closer look, before exclaiming, "I-it is..! L-look, I r-remember those burn marks!" 

Sure enough, scorches covered the doll, where mikan had pressed in burning buds her mom had left behind, all those years ago. "Huh... I guess we were connected for much longer than we thought." Chiakis eyes drooped, fondly looking upon the dolls. "I-I guess so.." her voice was a little breathless.

They were so close to each other, she realized with a jolt, so close that she could feel chiakis breath. She looked at her, nervous, but enraptured. Chiaki felt her gaze on her, yawning lightly, before looking up at her. 

"You can kiss me, if you want." her pink eyes loozed just side ways of hers, so beautiful, mikan could look at them all day. Mikans lips part, chiaki inching closer in response, before she threaded her hands in hers, a smile on her lips.

(her touch was soft.)

....

(her lips were softer.)


End file.
